by Tony Abbott
“It’s amazing that car still drives,” she said. “Will you take a look at that thing —”
“Will you run?” I said. But by the time we leaped down onto the stairs, it was already too late. The little door leading inside was locked tight. Down below, the car doors swung open with a grinding shriek, and a glint of silver flashed in the fading light.
“A Turkish throwing dagger!” I gasped.
“Uh, actually,” she said, squinting down, “I think . . . it’s a leg.”
The flash of silver touched the stones. I made another of those squeaky gasps. “Are you saying he has a silver wooden leg!”
There was another flash, followed by two more. There were four silver legs. It was a walker. Holding onto the walker was a man — I think it was a man — with a saggy bare chest and saggy blue tights and red boots. It was Mr. Stimp, the strongman! After him, a tall man — Mr. Tall, the giant! — unfolded himself from the backseat. The car heaved like a ship emptied of its cargo, bobbing on its tread-less tires. The tall man staggered to get his balance, then walked toward the water, his arms out, muttering, “Show me where! Point me at him! Beale, I’ll stomp ya!”
The car still wasn’t empty. The veiled purpley woman clambered out next, as low-cut as ever. The parrot fluttered from behind her head and landed on the roof of the car. The round, red-and-gray bearded man rolled from the front seat like a barrel, tipped over, and was helped up by the man with the walker.
“Sank you!” the round man said, making an attempt to click his heels, but staggering again, this time against the sedan.
“Will you look at that,” Dia whispered.
“I’m looking, I’m looking.” I couldn’t move.
Finally, there came a thump-thump — “owww!” — from behind the wheel. This was followed by an agonizing creak, and the driver’s door burst outward and fell with a clunk to the stones.
The rest of the crew turned and watched as a black shoe toppled out onto the piazza. A foot in a droopy yellow sock emerged from the front seat, groped for the shoe like a blind man with his cane, found it, twisted into it, and clomped down on its heel. Following the shoe from the car was a very thin man in sunglasses with a face like somebody dead.
“Mr. Skull!” I said.
Mr. Skull raised his thin hand up over his eyes and squinted every which way. He saw nothing until the purple lady removed his sunglasses. Then he saw us in the tower. “Them we get. Now we get. Them!”
When no one moved, he added: “Oobarab!”
“What did he say?” said Mr. Tall.
“Oobarab,” one cheered, then another did, then they all did.
Dia turned to me. “This is so very weird.”
Together the Secret Order of Oobarab attacked us. At least, I think it was an attack. It was very slow. To be fair, we almost had to wait for them to catch up. They helped one another across the stones from the car to the house.
“That boy knows everything. Stop him!” said the veiled lady, her veil fluttering, her purple gloved hand waving toward us.
“Ve’ll get you!” shouted the German dagger specialist. “For ze Order of ze Oobarab!”
“Oobarab!” some of them hooted again.
They weren’t fast, the Secret Order, but they didn’t stop, either. They jammed themselves into the house and, amid someone’s calls for the elevator, started up toward the tower. As slow as they were, they had somehow trapped us up there. With sheer numbers, they could overwhelm us. My heart was thumping in my chest.
Dia leaned toward me in the dying light. “The rooftops.”
“What about them?” I asked, already afraid of the answer.
“Run over them to escape?” she said.
“Are you crazy?” I asked.
She gave me a look. “Are they?”
“You have a point. Let’s go. You first.”
So we climbed over the railing in the very same spot that the goons had once held Marnie. The shortest — but not all that short — drop to the nearest roof was at least eight feet.
“Hey!” shouted the dagger man, bursting from the door first and onto the stairs toward us. “Zat’s too danjeroo for kidz!”
“No, we’re okay,” said Dia. “Thanks, though!” Her palm held out to me, she grinned. “Thoughtful, isn’t he?”
I grasped her hand firmly and together we slid across the roof tiles to the edge. We lowered ourselves to the next one down and from there to the balcony of a bedroom.
“They lived in separate bedrooms, you know,” said Dia. “John and Mable. I read it in the guidebook.”
I glanced at her. “Thanks for the tidbit.” Hanging down carefully at first, then jumping wildly, we dropped onto the piazza and raced across it as the red sun — as red as the throat of that hummingbird in Grandma’s backyard — disappeared finally into the bay. I think that despite everything, I may have laughed then. It was really too beautiful to do anything else.
The air was alive, and this was it.
I knew this was it. What it was, I couldn’t say. But I was sure this was it.
We raced across the lawn toward the gatehouse when we heard the sedan popping and hissing again. Even though the chase seemed to happen in slow motion, it wasn’t long before Skullhead cut us off and forced us past the cherub being attacked by banyan roots into an garage area behind the caretaker’s house.
The yard was fenced in. There was no way out.
“This place we know good!” whooped the yellow-socked driver.
We were trapped by the Secret Order of Oobarab, a gang of the oldest and slowest, never-quite-actual circus people you could imagine.
“Geev it up, kinders!” said the knife thrower, hustling over to us. “Za papers! Now!”
They moved closer, pushing us flat against the fence.
“Um . . . no!” said Dia. She snatched the pages from me and stuffed them into her cutoffs.
The Oobarabs looked at one another. Without knowing exactly what to do, they staggered toward us menacingly. Mr. Stimp tugged his giant gun from a giant fanny pack on his tiny waist and rested it on his walker, aiming at us.
“Trapped!” said the purple lady with all the curves.
All of a sudden, something round and black and soft flew down from the roof of the caretaker’s house. It caught the barrel of Stimp’s gun and dangled on the tip of it.
It was a beret.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The Oobarabs gasped, muttered, grumbled, and looked up.
“Ha . . . hal . . . halt!” coughed a voice.
It was the old beret-wearing man from the funeral home and Sunken Gardens, standing on the roof of the garden shed.
Seeing him there, I suddenly recognized him. He was the guy with the fish-eyed glasses and dust bandanna working at the real estate agent’s house. “You’re Randy Halbert’s father-in-law!” I said. “The man with the tiles!”
“Wait . . . tiles?” Dia said. “Then you must have hidden the story in the tower. And probably in the hotel bathroom, too! You’re Doyle from the story —”
“Chester Howell Dobbs!” snarled Skull, as if they were old enemies.
“A name that strikes fear!” said the old man hoarsely.
The purple-veiled woman wobbled on her heels. “Oh, Dobbsy!” Then something else came to me. “Wait a second. You broke into my house and left this postcard for us to find. That’s why we’re all here!”
“Oh, no, dear,” said a voice. “That was me.”
Stepping up behind Chester Dobbs on the roof and clutching his arm was none other than . . . Mrs. K!
“Hello, Jason!” she said with a little wave of house keys. “Don’t worry, dear. I turned lights on at your Grandma’s house and locked it up snug as a bug.”
I stared at them in shock. But there was more.
Everything around us seemed to rustle and snap then, and old folks staggered out of the bushes and from behind the pink house in ones and twos like the unburied dead. Standing together against the Oobarabs, th
ey introduced themselves as war veterans and mystery writers — there was even a cook with an apron from the old breakfast diner! I recognized some of them from the funeral home.
They were Nick Falcon’s — Emerson Beale’s — old friends.
I slumped to the ground, not knowing whether to laugh or cry or scream. I whispered softly. “Holy cow.”
I wished Dad could see this. All these people — Dia and I, too — were here at this moment because of Marnie and Nick, Grandma and Emerson, his mother and her boyfriend.
“What do you want the story for?” asked Dia, pulling the pages from her cutoffs.
“Not the story,” said the purple lady. “The deed.”
“The deed?” I said, taking the papers from Dia now. I scanned the last two pages but still found them impossible to read. “What does it say?”
“Dear, it’s a deed to three miles of waterfront property,” said Mrs. K.
“Worth millions!” said Skeleton. “And it’s ours. To Oobarab it belongs. Quincy Monroe deeded us the land if his daughter Agnes died. It’s ours by right of law. It’s why we been after you!”
“Ve knew Beale must hev hidden zis deed,” said the German. “Und ven Shtimp trailed you to ze hotel, ve knew you ver on ze trail und vood lead us to it. Zo, ve came efter you.”
I was shocked. “So it’s all about . . . land?”
“Oh, Jason, dear,” said Mrs. K, clearing her throat. “It’s all right. Give the man his deed. It’s nearly worthless now, anyway.”
“Verseless?” cried the German.
“Kidding is what you’ve got to be!” said Skull, his jaw dropping open.
Dobbs tapped his pockets. “Dang. Where is it?” Then he rubbed his head. “Oh. Mr. Stimp. The beret.”
The tiny-waisted man turned the beret upside down. Tucked inside it was a letter. He gave it to Mr. Tall who handed it up to Dobbs.
“It’s from the old man’s lawyers,” said Dobbs. “The land was worth millions. Three miles of bayfront property in Tampa and St. Pete were owned by Patterson Monroe, Quincy’s father. He leased it to Pinellas County a long time ago and, my friends, they built Gandy Bridge on it! The lease meant millions of dollars paid to its holder.”
“Millions!” Skull repeated, his eyes twinkling icily.
Chester Dobbs shook his head. “Except that it was a hundred-year lease, signed ninety-six years ago. And the amount paid the owner of the land was less and less until, after a hundred years, the land reverts to the county, lock, stock, and barrel. The deed is worth only a few thousand dollars now,” he said. “You can fish on the land for free, of course. But then, so can everyone else.” It was quiet for a long time, except for the occasional sweep and flutter of bats over the darkening lawns. All of the Oobarabs looked at the yellow-socked man. Skeleton tensed for a minute, his mouth quivering. Then he slumped his shoulders, glumly kicking the grass with his old shoes. “Oh, what’s the use? Worthless? We knew the terms of it. We may be circus folk, but dumb we ain’t.”
“You knew the deed was nearly up?” Dia said, astonished. “But if you knew, why did you chase us all over the place to get it?”
The Oobarabs glanced at one another. No one spoke.
Finally, Dobbs said, “Maybe I know why. The Order’s been waiting for a chance to reunite. To take up the chase one last time. To live the old days again. The world doesn’t have much use for people like us anymore. Until the deed was found, the story really wasn’t over. It was a reason to start going again and to keep going. The same reason to keep going that I felt. That we all felt. Am I right?”
“Keep going,” murmured Mr. Tall, gazing over at the cherub tangled in the tree roots. “It’s a good reason.”
“For ze danger und ze glory!” the German knife thrower added.
“So you’ll take your thousands and stop chasing our friends here?” asked Mrs. K.
Skeleton shrugged. “Sure. No point now. Nice kids they look as if they are. But don’t blab it. The Oobarabs are back together again. And they have iron hearts.”
“Oobarab!” said Mr. Stimp, raising his arms high.
“Oobarab,” said the others, not quite in unison.
“Thank you,” I said to them, not sure that any of it made sense to me yet. “By the way, sir, what’s your real name?”
“Scully,” he said, shaking my hand.
There was no fight, no rumble of berets and spatulas and walkers. A calm settled over everyone, and we slowly made our way back to the piazza together. The sun had dipped below the dark Gulf. We sat along the railing by the bay, all of us, quiet under the bluing sky.
“Of course, we all knew about Quincy Monroe and the way he kept his beautiful daughter,” said Mrs. K. “But Emerson was the only one to try to do something about it.”
“You can’t scare a man with a love like that,” said Dobbs.
“Ve twied to,” the knife thrower sighed, rubbing his shoulder and introducing himself with an almost click of his heels as Heinrich Punch. “Ach, I can’t srow no more.”
“You were da besht,” said Mr. Stimp, biting off the barrel of his enormous pistol, which turned out to be chocolate. “You were.”
“Sank you much,” he said. “I never wealy twied to hurt himp. He must heff known zis, no? I vanted only to shcare himp.”
“You didn’t much,” said Dobbs. “Never mind what he wrote in his story. You were always a menacing terror in the story.”
“I like to sink zo,” said Punch.
Scully shook his bony head. “Boy, oh, boy. You can’t scare a man with a love like that, I always say!”
“You always say?” said Dobbs. “Everybody steals from me. . . .”
“But the story,” I said. “Was any of it true?”
The bunch of them looked from one to another and back again.
“Beale wrote bizarre mysteries,” said Dobbs finally. “But maybe there was a lot of truth in them. Old Monroe was an angry and twisted man, sure he was; but maybe all he really wanted was for the daughter he loved more than anything to be well again. Love will drive some people to amazing things.”
The purple lady sniffled under her veil, then sneezed, and a furry thing fell to the ground at my feet.
Dia picked it up. It was a fake beard.
“Well, there goes the act,” said the woman, pulling her veil off to reveal the kind-looking face of an attractive older lady.
I recognized her instantly. “You were the lady at Sunken Gardens! You wore pink! And yellow!”
She shrugged. “Every now and again I need a break from Madame Olga, the Amazing Bearded Lady. Besides, you get tired of purple, purple, purple all the time. It’s Marcia by the way. You know my son, Timmy.”
“I do?”
“He’s assistant director at Brent’s,” she said.
I gaped at her. “Mr. Chalmers?”
“Here,” said a voice from the shadows. The pasty-faced man who had first said the name of Marnie walked out to join his mother. “Sorry about your grandma,” he said to me.
I looked over at Dia. Her eyes were wide and glowing and moist in the fading light. Everyone was quiet for a while until Dobbs spoke.
“I guess there’s nothing left to do now but take you to Bay Pines to see where he’s resting.”
“Bay Pines?” My heart sank. It was where Grandma was buried.
Dia put her hand on my arm. “Oh, Jason . . .”
I looked down at the pages in my hand. “You mean, after all this, we’re going to the cemetery?”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
“I said where he’s resting,” said Dobbs. “Not where he’s dead.”
“Bay Pines Veterans’ Hospital,” said Mrs. K. “It’s where Nick is —” She suddenly squinted around through her glasses. “Dang! Here comes security!”
“They run us off always,” said Scully.
“Hey, you!” came a shout, then the sound of footsteps. “Are you geezers out there again? The estate is closed!” Then softer: “Unit Three, requesting bac
kup. Unit Four —”
“It’s Lori! Let’s scram off !” said Marcia Chalmers.
“Scat!” yelled Dobbs.
“In my mind, I’m alweady awound ze corner!” said Punch.
We raced to the blue sedan and piled inside. It was actually very roomy. We tore away at top speed, laying rubber — as if there was any left to lay! — on the winding drive. We screeched around the visitors’ center, then sliced over the grass and under the gatehouse arch, chased by a couple of whirring golf carts and the shouts of the estate security.
We hurtled through the streets of Sarasota, groaning and shrieking like a herd of elephants and parrots, then careened onto the highway north to St. Petersburg.
“He-he!” cried Heinrich. “Ze old bomp, she still gots it!”
When we were safely tooling along the highway, Scully turned to me. “About Marnie,” he said, “that something fishy was going on, we knew. Before she got it, the old man wanted to see all her mail. Lots of postcards. Very fishy.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” said Mrs. K. She opened her purse, took out a stack of old colored postcards, and gave them to me. There must have been fifty or more of them. It was a collection of all the sights in St. Petersburg.
“Wow,” said Dia. “What a stash! My dad would love to check these out.”
“Nick sent your grandma many over the years,” Mrs. K said to me. “I kept them all for her. But that one . . .” She tapped the card of the Hotel DeSoto still in my hand. “That was the first. She’d never part with it.” The woman smiled sweetly at me, but with a faraway look in her eyes, as if she was remembering something from long ago.
By the time we screeched into the parking lot of Bay Pines Veterans Hospital, barely half an hour remained before visiting hours were over. A large new hospital was surrounded by a kind of wandering campus of older Spanish buildings and lush, green lawns with very tall pine trees and oaks and palms. Bay Pines was like heaven, a resort, even, except for the sick people. Older men and women, mostly men, from Vietnam and Afghanistan and the Gulf Wars, I guessed, were taking the night air in the park outside the main entrance. Many were in chairs, some had canes. Some younger men stayed to themselves, staring out with vacant looks, while others laughed in small groups.